


Oxytocin and Attachment

by ashen_key



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Comment Fic, F/M, POV Female Character, Probably One-Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-28
Updated: 2012-09-28
Packaged: 2017-11-15 04:42:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/523266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashen_key/pseuds/ashen_key
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes his heart skips, a jarring silence to her sensors that makes her own, still mostly human, slow then speed up with a hit of adrenaline.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oxytocin and Attachment

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [SugarFey](http://archiveofourown.org/users/SugarFey/pseuds/SugarFey)'s comments on fandom's tendency to write Natasha as a robot. That the logical thing my mind took from this is 'let's try and write Natasha as a cyborg' probably says a lot. 
> 
> Originally written as a comment!fic.

_Love_ is a combination of biology and psychology; dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, oxytocin, vasopressin; attachment, bonding, commitment, habit; the way sometimes his heart speeds up when he looks at her.

Sometimes his heart skips, a jarring silence to her sensors that makes her own, still mostly human, slow then speed up with a hit of adrenaline. 

Software is unreliable, Natasha concludes, hormones problematic and unregulated. And yet...

The Red Room crafted an organic computer inside the burned and broken body of a child and let both grow together, which means that _Nataliya Alianovna Romanova_ is still there, somewhere, wanting pink ballet shoes and roses. It was whimsical, and a childish attachment that is not irrational but perfectly logical from a certain point of view. It was a calculated move, deliberately leaving her human enough to pick up the shortcomings in each mission's programmed persona. 

Programming is never flawless, as she worked to her advantage in breaking her controls, building herself up out of the fragmented codes in her wetware-brain. That brain retained Nataliya, Natashenka, and gives her theory of mind grounded in _human_ psychology.

Logically, it includes the possibility of excess oxytocin and attachment in relation to a man who smiles at her with dilated pupils when she's wearing old jeans, worn t-shirt, messy hair sticking to her skin. He is proven and stable, he is _safe_. It's been mathematically proven; she's run the tests.

So as her heart speeds up, Natasha smiles back at him.


End file.
